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Sunday, 21 May 2017

The fresh gist as hundreds of commuters, passengers and other road users were
on Friday stranded when workers of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology
(LAUTECH), Teaching Hospital, Ogbomoso blocked the ever busy Ogbomoso-Ilorin
Express Road.

According to report gathered the placard-carrying workers who sang various solidarity
songs also wanted the government to pay the outstanding eleven months salaries
comprising six months balance of last year and five months for the year 2017.

Some of the inscriptions on the placards read: “Enough isenough since January 2016”, “We are hungry”, “Lautech Teaching Hospital workers
are dying of hunger”, “Ajimobi please pay our salary in full” and “Any
government that fails to pay rightful wage of its workforce is worthless”.

Others read, “O to gee fun Aabo owo osu (it is enough for
half salary)”, “Ajimobi don’t wait for God’s wrath”, “A father that fails to
feed his household while boasting of being a constituted authority is
clueless”, “what is our sin in Ogbomoso land”, “God will rescue us from the
hand of Ajimobi”.

It was learnt that the problem of delay in salaries started
in 2016 when the state government wrongly classified the teaching hospital as
one of the tertiary education institutions in the state that have students from
whom the institutions collect tuition fees.

Ladoke Akintola University of Technology students who use
the teaching hospital for their clinical training however pay their school fees
statutory to the University and as such denying LTH any opportunity of
generating revenue from the students.

Secretary, Committee of Unions, Abiodun Lawal who spoke on
behalf of his colleagues, informed that the workers are rejecting the idea of
half salary outrightly, demanding the government to start paying full salary.

He also called for the immediate correction of the class and
status of LTH Ogbomoso as a tertiary health institution, noting that the
hospital is primarily established for research, training and service.

“The hospital cannot charge unduly high fees for the
services being provided, otherwise the common man in the community will not be
able to afford it.
“Make LTH Ogbomoso work, health care os an essential service
of the government to its citizens. LTH provides health care services to the
people of Oyo state and the neighbouring states. It is a tertiary health
institution established for research, training and service in that order.
“We demand that the government start paying us full salary.
We demand urgent payment of the arrears of 2016 salaries and timely payment of
full salary henceforth as well as the immediate correction of the class and
status of LTH Ogbomoso as a tertiary health institution”
Lawal who said that the workers have gone to every length,
particularly through relevant stakeholders to reach the governor, yet no result
insisted that the workers decided on the protest as a stakeholder to call
government attention to the situation of the workers and the hospital itself
before things go out of hand.

“The half salary situation has made us loose some of our
best hands. We are due for another accreditation but I doubt if we can pass it.
Our fear is that we might even loose some of the accreditations we had.
“We have lost most of our best hands to other hospitals,
especially those we trained with Oyo state money. We are crying out as stakeholders
before the whole system collapse.”